Bug Guts

I’ve been pondering crushed ladybugs lately.  Odd, I know.  And not my normal fodder for my thought life.  Nonetheless, I’ve been seeing images in my mind’s eye of a tiny little hand holding a gross gob of bug guts that had moments earlier been a ladybug.  My then three-year-old son had thrust his hand into my face to show me.

            “Wook, Mommy!  It’s my wadybug!”

            “Ew!  What happened to it?” I asked as I hurriedly searched my purse for baby wipes and hand sanitizer.

            “I cwushed it,” he said.

            “Logan, why did you crush the ladybug?” I asked him, scanning my memory banks for any information that would indicate that early stages of psychosis included crushing bugs.  One look into those big, brown puppy-dog eyes, though, allayed any hint of fear.  They were full of emotion- a mixture of concern, sadness, and resolution.

            “I had to, Mommy,” he said.  “My wadybug twied to fwy away.”

            This memory surfaced recently as I was contemplating the relationships in my own life.  One in particular had my stomach in knots.  Actually, it wasn’t as much the relationship that had me concerned as much as it was what I perceived as potential pain and loss.  I feared for my friend, or so I thought, and I was determined to do what I could to save her.

            For many years, I’ve described myself as passionate about relationships, specifically those heart-level friendships wherein you get to know the very essence of the other person and allow yourself to be known in like manner.  I’d experienced the benefit of it for myself, to be sure, and when you experience something that inspires growth and healing, you want everyone to get what you got.  One of the things I realized as I read Scripture was that friendship is sometimes messy; it’s not always roses and sunshine.  Sometimes there’s tension.  Disagreements arise; no one’s perfect, so we all mess up from time to time; and, especially if you’re a woman, hormones can wreak all kinds of havoc!  But I saw that God expected true friends to weather these storms and, when necessary, to wound as only a friend can when the goal is healing, for wounds of a friend are better than kisses from an enemy.

            I was contemplating all of this the other day when I was considering my thoughts, feelings, and actions concerning my friend.  I somewhat self-righteously determined that it would be a lot easier if I had remained oblivious to the less fun aspects of friendship, for because of it, my lot in life was now to experience martyrdom (not my conscious thought at the time, but the attitude was certainly present).  However, it was okay, because this is sometimes what loving your friend looks like.  Hadn’t I learned that years ago?  Yet still I didn’t enjoy feeling like my friends were angry with me, and I couldn’t begin to count the times I thought and re-thought and second-guessed whether the things I had done and said, while done and said with a sincere belief that I was walking in truth and doing what I had prayerfully determined to be best, were somehow wrong.  The stomach knots simply grew tighter.

Suddenly, I had a moment of revelation.  Many times the Holy Spirit reveals things to me gradually and over time, but this was no less than a “light bulb” moment in which I saw something quite vividly and instantaneously.  Loving your friends!  Loving your friends… Loving… There came a subtle albeit very powerful shift in my perspective and in my understanding.  When love is the motivator for what you do and say, it changes everything.  For one thing, love covers a multitude of sins; so even if and when we miss a beat in our efforts to spur our friends on, it’s really okay because the underlying motive is love.  But it occurred to me that I wasn’t really loving my friend.  I was somewhat  treating her like Logan’s ladybug.  I was afraid of losing her; I didn’t want her to fly away, so I felt the need to close my hand over her more tightly.  If love isn’t self-seeking, and love does what’s in the very best interest of another regardless of the cost to self, while I truly love my friend as unconditionally as a person can love, what I was demonstrating was the antithesis of love.  I was more concerned about how a perceived loss would affect me than I was with what my friend truly needed.

I was struck by the irony of what I’ve been doing.  I took an experience and a revelation- that God created us for relationship and heart-level connection with our brothers and sisters in Christ- and essentially turned it into a law.  I took note of everything the Bible teaches about relating to one another as co-heirs of Christ, and I made every effort to “be good” in this area.  I turned loving people into a means of maintaining right standing with God.  That sounds so utterly ridiculous, but as one who has struggled with legalism and perfectionism for the vast majority of her life, that’s an area in which I don’t always see the forest for the trees, so to speak.

While this revelation wasn’t what I would call exactly fun, it was, on another hand, incredible.  I’m always amazed by how gently the Holy Spirit corrects and leads.  He wasn’t at all harsh, nor was he disappointed in me.  In fact, because God is love, then it’s his very nature to want to show me areas in which I’m not walking in the freedom Christ brought me.  It’s his desire to free me to completely love so I can be free to be loved completely.

So to my friends:  My motives have been sincere, but sometimes I’ve been sincerely wrong.  And that’s okay; I tend to forget that I, too, have the freedom to learn from my mistakes and my misunderstandings and that I’m just as deserving of having grace and mercy shown me as those to whom I endeavor to show the same.  God is so good, and his love so unfailing.  He’s showing me that in much fuller measure; just when I think I’ve grasped what unconditional love is, he causes me to zoom out and see a bigger picture of it.  I pray this for each of you- and not because of how it might benefit me. J  I pray this because I know how dear to God’s heart you are, and how dear you are to mine as well, and as much as I desire for you to know more fully the passion of God for you, he desires it all the more.

Opposition

“Any movement toward freedom and life, any movement toward God or others, will be opposed.  Marriage, friendship, beauty, rest- the thief wants it all.” ~John Eldredge, Waking the Dead

I had one of the most beautiful, wonderful, spiritual experiences of my life recently.  I was praying for some people I knew who were struggling with various issues.  While the issues varied, I had the sense that they all had something similar at the core- that they stemmed from false perceptions of how God wanted to relate to them.  I was overwhelmed by the thought of how often God is indicted because of a lack of understanding or a level of spiritual immaturity on our parts.  In that moment, I had a transcendent experience- a moment of clarity when I was tuned in to the frequency of the Spirit in such a way that I got it!  Something that I’d been professing belief in for quite some time actually clicked somewhere in my heart, and I really got it.  In a moment that in some ways defies explanation or description, I caught a glimpse of my Father’s heart as I hadn’t before, and I loved him more fully than ever before in my life.  And I wanted to defend him!  Not that I thought he needed me to come to his defense… I can only liken it to how I might feel if someone were upset with my husband about something he’d done or said if they didn’t know him well and understand that his intentions and motives were pure and right.  I would want to correct their misinterpretation of his actions and reveal his character to them; I would want them to see in him the man I know him to be.  I cried out, “God!  I want people to know who you are!  I want them to love you the way I do!  I want them to know your love the way I’ve known it and am knowing it!”  And I realized:  I was living out that which I had been claiming to believe.  My desire to reach out to others was, in that moment, a natural outflow of my love relationship with God.  It wasn’t based on a sense of obligation or legalism.  It was incredibly exciting to me.  This was a milemarker in my journey with God.  But then…

Thoughts.  Impressions.  Fear.  Ideas that obviously weren’t coming from God.  “Who do you think you are?  Do you think you’re oh-so-spiritual now?  Pride!”  And then insane feelings of insecurity.  “Well, you’d better love God that much, because you know so-and-so?  She’s on the verge of deciding she really can’t stand you after all.  You’re going to be alone… left behind… insignificant…”  It would seem I should have learned by now; nevertheless, I tend to underestimate the enemy’s determination to hold me back and bring me down.  I underestimate my potential; and I underestimate the power and effectiveness of a friend of God coming alive and living from the heart.  When we embrace our liberation, we encourage others to do likewise.  So we become a threat.

“So, it becomes the devil’s business to keep the Christian’s spirit imprisoned.  He knows that the believing and justified Christian has been raised up out of the grave of his sins and trespasses.  From that point on, Satan works that much harder to keep us bound and gagged, actually imprisoned in our own grave clothes.  He knows that if we continue in this kind of bondage… we are not much better off than when we were spiritually dead.”  ~A.W. Tozer

So I pray for more of that spiritual acuity.  Vision beyond what my eyes can behold.  Awareness of the things that go on in the spiritual realm, because that’s where the battle is taking place.  I pray that for those I know personally, and I pray that for those I haven’t yet met.  Because I know my Father’s great passion for them.  He sets our feet in a wide open space, and there is freedom to roam and explore and find those treasures he’s put in our paths to find.  Life is so much more than following the rules; becoming a “good” or “better” Christian… It’s about living life to the full.  It’s about becoming!

No More "Hearing"

I recently made a rather bold, somewhat surprising, perhaps even controversial decision regarding my relationship with God.  I decided that I will cease trying to “hear” him.  I can see where such a proclamation might cause jaws to drop.  It seems as though that would be counterproductive to my developing a deeper intimacy with Christ.  After all, in any relationship, communication is key.  It would never even occur to me that I stop trying to “hear” my husband.  I understand that’s a sure recipe for marital disharmony!  But my relationship with God is far different than my relationship with any human being.  Because God is spirit, he has none of the limitations of frail humanity, and therefore, his communication isn’t confined to verbalization.  When I focus on “hearing” God, whether I think I’m doing so or not, I limit the manner in which I relate to him.  And it seems to me that relating with God is the ultimate goal.  He loves me.  He desires relationship with me.  So of course he’s communicating with me.  Yet how often have I been guilty of uttering the words, “God just isn’t talking to me lately!”  I believe that as we grow and mature, it’s God’s intention to expand our horizons by allowing us to experience greater levels of his spirit communing with ours.

I believe God can and does use anything and everything to communicate his love and revelations of himself, but I think there are two very overlooked means by which he does so.  One of those is through the desires and passions of our hearts.  I think we’re often lulled into believing that our hearts are thoroughly wicked, and therefore any desire we have has to be crucified for the sake of being a good Christian.  However, the Bible says that when we’re in Christ, we’re a new creation, and it also says that he places within our redeemed hearts desires and passions in line with who it is we’re created to be.  It’s not all that difficult to distinguish between the desires of the heart and the desires of the flesh.  Ironically, it’s sometimes easier to grant the desires of our flesh than it is the desires of our hearts.  What if we gave ourselves permission to act upon our godly passions?  Or to stop doing some things that we’re not passionate about?

Another manner by which God communicates is our imaginations.  I was reluctant to accept that when I first thought about it.  There is a lot of New Age teaching with regard to imagining and opening the mind and such, and  I wanted no part of that.  Neither do I now.  However, it occurred to me that God created the imagination.  He does all he does purposely.  So what was the purpose of the imagination?  The Greek word for “imagine” is the same word for “meditate.”  When I discovered that, it suddenly made sense to me that the imagination is a faculty of the mind- that place where the enemy has no problem sowing lies and negativity.

Philippians 4:8 says, “Summing it all up, friends, I'd say you'll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.”  I’ve been guilty of treating this passage of Scripture as nothing more than a good suggestion.  After all, it takes effort to train my mind to travel in a different direction than it’s used to going.  But what if giving my imagination over to the Holy Spirit and meditating on him would exponentially open the eyes of my heart and my understanding to those secrets he wishes to reveal to me?

Things to ponder…

Guilty

I must say, I know how to choose friends.  I have some great ones! J  While each of them is a blessing to me, one in particular blessed me in a tangible manner recently.  It was a complete surprise.  I had no inkling it was coming.  It was a demonstration of her love and appreciation for me.  My initial reaction:  Guilt!  In the span of a few seconds, thoughts of various nature ping-ponged around in my head.  Certainly I was incredibly grateful and delighted; who doesn’t like to receive a gift?  But I found myself feeling unworthy of its receipt.  I thought of the reasons I really didn’t merit something so nice.  I then thought of how generous was my friend and determined I fell short in that area.  I tried to think of how I could take the gift and do something nice for my friend with it.  I then pondered the “right” thing to do with it.  Something that was meant to bless me had become, in my estimation, something not to steward with gratefulness and delight but something to retroactively earn.  When I allowed the ping-ponging to subside, I recognized that this approach to receiving a gift wasn’t new to me.   Don’t I, on some level, wrestle with the concept of having to earn that which God has given me as demonstrations of his love?  My husband… my children… grace…

I believe that part of my becoming process involves learning to view myself through the lens of grace.  This lens magnifies who I am and what I do right and diminishes the imperfections.  This is not a means by which I can “let myself off the hook,” or see myself as better than I am, but it’s a means by which I can grow in God-confidence.  Doing so serves not to exalt myself but to glorify he who is perfecting me- he who delights in me because I’m Lisa.

Shadow Lands

Grant Mitchell

My boys and I have been doing quite a bit of reading this summer.  We recently finished The Chronicles of Narnia series.  This was the first venture through the land of Narnia for my kids, and I took great delight in journeying through with them.  I was near their ages when I was first introduced to Aslan and Narnia and Cair Paravel and Talking Beasts.  I remember how much I wanted to find a wardrobe that would transport me to a magical land of adventure and wonder.  In fact, I still think it would be wonderful!  The Chronicles of Narnia have long been among my most favorite books, so it was special to share that with my children.

Logan Michael

As is always the case after reading these books, I stumbled again and again upon nuggets of spiritual truth nestled within the pages and coming out through the dialogue of the characters.  I’ve been pondering the words of Aslan in The Last Battle, “They’ve chosen cunning over belief.”  He was speaking of a group of dwarves who, while they were in a most beautiful and heavenly place, had been deceived into thinking that they were in the confines of a dark and dirty stable.  They could see nothing but blackness; they could smell nothing but stable filth; and even when Aslan gave them the most wonderful delicacies to eat, they believed themselves to be eating rotting vegetables and straw and such.

Where have I chosen cunning over belief?  God forbid that it be AT ALL!  Yet I know that’s not the case.  But my prayer is that I would continue to have eyes to see and ears to hear what the Holy Spirit never tires of teaching me- of bringing me to those places of encountering the REAL God.  This was the problem in the story of The Last Battle.  The Narnians had knowledge of Aslan; they were doing their best to serve him and follow him.  Yet it had been centuries since anyone had had an encounter with him, so when a false Aslan appeared and began issuing edicts and commands that didn’t seem to fit with the character of the Aslan they knew of cognitively, doubts fueled by fear ran rampant.  Perhaps they’d angered him in some manner, so of course they should just strive to do better; be better… Perhaps this was part of his “goodness,” for he wasn’t a tame lion, after all... and it certainly wouldn’t do NOT to be obedient, even if they did wonder on some level if this really was Aslan, because if it were, what consequences might they suffer for their noncompliance?

I fear that this is where many Christians find themselves today.  They’re following a semblance of Christ that is lacking the love and fellowship that is the essence of who he is and what he desires with his beloved.  The devil is cunning; shrewd; conniving.  Often his lies and deception come wrapped in the faintest hint of truth so we might not see through his guise as easily.  And while he may not succeed in convincing us to give up on Christ altogether, the lives we live are shadows at best of what it is God really wants us to experience.

God, bring us out of the shadow lands!  May it seem repulsive to us to continue being merely figments of who we truly are.  May we explode into our real selves!  Draw us by your spirit to those romantic places wherein we experience your very essence.

Connor's Legacy

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart;
      do not depend on your own understanding."

Proverbs 3:5

Today my family and I celebrate the life of Connor Paul Walker- "Desired Little One".  He was born ten years ago today; he went to be with Jesus ten years ago tomorrow.  So many thoughts skitter through my head.  What is it I want to convey?  Do I want to share the circumstances that surrounded his birth and death?  Part of me wants to.  He was my firstborn son, and I want people to know about him, and because his time on earth was so very short, it would seem that there's really not much else to share other than those circumstances.  I realize, though, what a short-sighted view that is.  There's so much more to Connor's life than the time he spent with us.  Were I to depend on my own understanding, I would pay this no heed.  I would remain angry with God.  Couldn't he have intervened when my husband and I, along with countless others, begged him to do so and healed his body?  Surely he could have.  And in my own understanding, I would still be questioning why a loving Father, if not for the sake of Cory and me, wouldn't at least come to the rescue of a helpless baby.  Those were most certainly things I thought and felt and wrestled with a decade ago.  But I've come to recognize that my own understanding is so little.  In so many ways, it's so very childish and immature, and though I may grow in intellect and reasoning, in light of the omniscience of God, my understanding will remain small at best in so many ways.  So I choose not to trust in what I can see or feel or touch or understand, and I choose to trust, as Abraham did when God asked him to sacrifice the son whom he had waited so long to hold in his arms and was to be his promised heir, in the goodness of God.  His ways are higher than my ways, and his thoughts far above my own.  In Abraham's case, he was provided a ram in the thicket to be the sacrifice instead of his son.  I wanted a ram in the thicket. It didn't come in a physical sense; Connor still went on to heaven long before what seemed just to me.  But that wasn't the sum total of his life.  His legacy lives on.  Because of Connor Paul, Cory and I aren't the same people we were ten years ago.  Because of what we went through, our relationship with God has a richness to it born only in the soil of sorrow.  It caused us to become completely real with God, and it allowed us, over time, to know the joy of being comforted by a God whose love for us can't be fathomed.  Because of what we went through, our intentionality in parenting our other precious sons is far greater than it might have been otherwise.  Do I desire to have my Connor with me today?  Sure.  But would I trade what I went through?  Not if it meant not being who I am today and not having the relationship with God that I now have.  So today we celebrate Connor Paul, and we're eternally grateful for the gift of his legacy.

Hiding in the Bushes

I read once that to be a mother is to forever after wear your heart outside of your body.  I find this is often more true than not.  On the one hand, I find it reassuring that, as one so prone to bouts of selfishness and self-focus, still there is something within me that springs to action when one of my children experiences pain or danger.  In spite of my human nature with all its flaws and imperfections, my love for my kids is fierce, and because of that, I sometimes find my heart breaking at my inability to keep theirs from doing so.  This was the case yesterday.  In the whole realm existence, this was a relatively small thing.  My baby had hurt feelings.  He felt left out; he felt unjustly treated; and he felt like he didn’t have a friend in the world.  The first rip in my heart came when I saw him huddled all alone behind a bush, bravely wearing his knight helmet- after all, while he might be my “baby,” he’s seven years old!  Nigh unto manhood!  It would never do to have his peers know the depths of his sensitivity.  Thus this valiant knight kept his helmet covering his eyes so no one would see his tears.  But even moms of knights have a sense regarding the emotional status of their tender warriors.  He was reluctant to share at first, but finally he divulged what was causing his pain.  Now, the grown-up in me realized right away that, first of all, tiredness on his part was largely to blame, and secondly, no one had intentionally been mean to him; his perspective was simply that of a tired 7-year-old child.  However, the grown-up in me also understood that the enemy doesn’t waste opportunities like that upon which to leap and give “interpretation” to the situation, i.e., “You’re just not likeable… you’re no good… you’re this, that, or the other…” And to think of my son being lied to so viciously and to know that his precious little heart was bleeding caused me such sorrow.  I sat with him on the ground and cried with him.  I so desperately wanted to hold him and cuddle him and make everything alright for him.  I said, “Logan, come on out from behind the bush.  Come to me.  Let me hold you.”  “No, Mom!” was his horrified reply.  He didn’t want his friends to think there was a problem at all, let alone have them witness his mom giving him comfort.

As is the case with many childhood dramas of this nature, it was short-lived and soon forgotten- by Logan, anyway.  It was something I pondered later.  I thought about how badly I wanted to hold my child- how I could almost feel the physical ache in my arms as they so badly wanted to cradle my little boy.  While I wanted to acknowledge his feelings and let him know that I understood the hurt of his heart, I also wanted to shed light on the truth of his circumstances for him so he would have a proper lens through which to view himself, his friends, and his life in general.  But he wouldn’t come to me.  I could only cry with him and tell him how much I loved him and offer what words of solace he was willing to listen to.  I realize that we, as adults, aren’t really all that different.  How often we hide behind the bushes, so to speak, our faces covered so no one will notice that we’re hurting.  But God knows.  And he comes to us, and his heart is torn as he hurts right along with us.  And he says, “Come on out from behind the bush.  Come to me.  Let me hold you.”  “No, God!” is often our horrified reply.  There are sundry reasons for our refusal of his loving overtures: fear… pride… embarrassment… most of which, if not all, stem from a misconception about who he truly is and misplaced trust.  Oh, but how patient he is!  He doesn’t weary of sitting on the ground with us, even if all we’ll allow him to do is whisper how much he loves us and cry with us, but he already sees the day when we’ll fall into those daddy arms that have been aching to cradle us, and he sees the freedom we’ll walk in when we allow him to bring to light the deception of the enemy and shine the light of truth into the darkest corners of our hearts.

My Father, how I love you!  How I desire to be in your great loving arms always.  Yet even so, there are those times I resist.  Why that is, I’m not always certain.  But even when I don’t allow myself to be comforted by you, you never cease to give comfort.  You never stop pursuing me; wooing me; inviting me to go further in and higher up with you.  So many people, God, have yet to experience your daddy love.  How your heart breaks for them!  Give them eyes to see and ears to hear what your spirit is speaking to them.  May they know the fullness of joy that is theirs for the having.